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Vol. 36 No 3-4
Greek Poetry: New Voices and Ancient Echoes

Spring 1999

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Yórgos Houliáras

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From: The Other Language (1981)

New Geography '70


I grew tired of the Aegean, rebetica, the sea —
they made my most stubborn words mouldy, that savagely 
I dragged as young girls from the gardens 
of Thermaikos to the fleshmarkets of Okla-
homa; as for those 

shining braids of every gorgeous 
babe (cheap rhetorical inspirations, fishless nets 
caught on the shallow stone bottom) 
they rot now in the mercury heads of poets 

Accolades shiver in hungry light 
hey Isocrates, voters shout, and walk a straight line 
the hoods insist; the mythical threads and names 
are riddled with holes in paper embroidery, 
divorced Penelope barely makes ends meet 
on the night shift in the textile factory, while 
the king of abortions Hippocrates promotes his son 
to director with false degrees from the college of 
lotus-eaters; 
from the wires of the central kiosk the Trojan horse 
watches us 
hung by the ears with clothes-pins 
on the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK 

Up to their elbows in congealed ink blood 
carried by milkmen of the military police 
with their temples respectfully doused in fumes 
of ministers' cars — plotters and tongue-counters 
exaggerate the horsepower of the new Greek ideology 

How they caress the state 
display her breasts in marble 
and in her sweet ups and downs the good youth became prudent, 
dressed in degrees and respected letters 
of introduction — he now walks around the streets 
musing on advertisements of the emigration bureaus; 
sometimes silently a heavy head 
bursts on the floor like bleeding fruit 

All of Greece became a terrible poem 

And the geographers of her pulse make gestures 
deep inside their pockets 
or again as if unrestrainable, victims of literary 
catastrophes 
(having been denounced by the aesthetics police) 
they push anti-culture in the most expensive boutiques; 
who, after all, are those 
who claim to avoid the many spices 
(despite recipes of ancient Alexandrian verse-cooks) 
who want to diet without ever having eaten 

prisoners of style, inspiration's kept ones who parade 
in spiritual salons, their entire body in a cup of coffee 
interpreted by a reader who knows only French, 
they constantly lose at cards their daddy's words 
scatter the wallet of truth into the well 
and then, felons, suicides, they want to claim 
that whatever they touch turns to gold 

Cut and sewn language of obscure enlighteners 
fleshy material, sarcastic, worn next to the skin, 
plant flesh, 
lost homeland without harbour, make this body a ship 
one day we all become tourists in our country 
prostitute poetry, the cab drivers curse in 
Constitution Square 
in counterfeit postcards badly-printed ancestors 
are fading away 

He too boils in the cauldron of words — I 
the linguanaut of Cape Canaveral, 
where can I hide, I who don't belong, 
in what embrace I wonder 
from the icy flames of noon? 
densely historical like blood, the keen naivete 
and hard faith of those young kids 
who constantly unfold their banners; 
the Acropolis cools in their shade 

She with the noose around her neck 
is the woman who had the abortion 
and gave birth to my own baby on the red 
frying pan 

I love her very much 
With her now I dance the frightful foxtrot of 
our century

Translated by David Mason and Yórgos Houliáras

Page(s) 111-113

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